Originally Posted by smh.com

The notice on the bar at Goulburn Workers Club is a sign of the times: "Attention members and guests. During our water crisis some drinks may be served in a plastic cup. Management and staff would like to thank you for your efforts in conserving water."

Recyclable plastic cups do not need litres of water to wash them each day and every litre is now precious in the Southern Tablelands city of 22,000.

Goulburn would have run dry by Christmas but emergency measures have secured its supply until August next year. It has been on level-five restrictions since October, with a ban on the use of town water outdoors. Households are asked to use 150 litres a person a day and the city's council is seeking to cut business consumption by 30 per cent.

In May last year, Goulburn's average daily water use was 9.94 million litres but last month was down to 5.95 million litres.

On busy nights at the Workers Club, plastic cups are compulsory after 10pm but optional at other times. Many may regard drinking beer out of plastic as a travesty, but the club's chief executive, Peter Walker, says he is surprised by how even older drinkers have supported the move.

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AdvertisementWhile someone somewhere is providing the water to make and recycle the cups, the edict has helped the club cut its water usage from more than a million litres a month to 650,000 litres.

And while the council has had to close its sporting fields because they are too bare and hard - and to empty its indoor pool, with swimmers having to travel to Canberra for training - the club has spent at least $120,000 since summer keeping its sporting facilities open. It has built tanks that can store 250,000 litres of run-off water which can be used for watering fields.

The club has paid to have water brought in from outside Goulburn and this week a bore will come on line.

In April, Goulburn had six millimetres of rain compared with the monthly average of 48. In May, 7.6 millimetres fell compared with the average of 50. At the weekend the city received seven millimetres.

Despite trying everything from plastic cups to short showers, the city is still not reaching its level-five target of five million litres a day.

At the Goulburn Soldiers Club, the general manager, Toni Mitchell, has begun a trial of waterless urinals. Away from work, her household of three has managed to get down to 180 litres a person each day by using washing machine water to flush the toilet.

Cutting water further, she said, had "become an imposition … but we have all got to dig deeper".

The weather bureau, meanwhile, was predicting rain for Goulburn overnight.

"There's rain on the south western slopes and it's moving towards Canberra and Goulburn," said the bureau's Bob Moore. But it would not be enough to solve the city's problems. "They'd be lucky if they get 20 millimetres," he said.

Storms yesterday dumped 16 millimetres on Narrabri, adding to the 28 received in the 24 hours to 9am. Another 15 fell over Coonamble, on top of the almost 10 millimetres it had on Sunday.

Young, on the south west slopes, had more than seven millimetres yesterday. Mr Moore said NSW would be mostly dry again by tomorrow.

Originally Posted by Ishmal

i gotta disagree with ya there Spindles,

i'd say beer tastes better when its poured from tap into glass/plastic cup...

in my experiance the same beer when drunk off tap is different from in stubbies & different again when drunk from cans.